We all know that Toph uses Earthbending to see, but she can use it for all sorts of other things too. Multiple genres. If there's any romance, it'll be TophxSokka, SokkaxSuki, SokkaxYue, or KataraxAang.

A/N: I thought it would be cool to write a bunch of Toph oneshots depicting the many uses of Earthbending. I love Toph, and she is a seriously underused character. I thought of this earlier yesterday, then wrote the entire thing out longhand in a hair salon while I was waiting for my turn. xD

A dash of Tokka is visible here if you squint and turn your head sideways. Chose to ignore it if you're a SokkaxSuki fan or something.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Happy Reading!

Read a Plan

Over
the last few weeks, Sokka had been teaching her to read. Well, not
really read, but an improvised version of reading. She
couldn't take a book, open it, and start reading – as far as Toph
was concerned, books were good for little more than throwing at
people – but now she could understand written letters and words.
Often times while Katara and Aang were splashing around and making
general fools of themselves, Sokka would take her by the water's
edge and teach her.

"Here,
like this." He took her hand, opened it, and traced a few
characters on her rough palm. The symbol appeared in her well-trained
mind's eye. "That's your name. The longer the word, the more
you have to write in order to spell it out."

"That's
common sense, stupid," she retorted, though with some reluctant
amusement.

She
felt him shrug. "You never know," Sokka said. He dropped her hand
(she held back a frown of disappointment) and placed his hand on the
ground. "You can feel that, right?"

Toph
nodded. Then, with one finger, Sokka traced something on the ground.
"Feel that?" he asked.

Indeed
she had. "It's the same thing you wrote on my hand," she
stated. "My name."

"Congratulations,
Toph, you just read something." His grin was visible even through
her blindness, and it was contagious. "Sort of."

Now
Sokka moved away a little on his knees, just enough to put a
decent-sized space between them. She felt him begin to write with his
finger on the stone upon which they had settled.

"Want
me to teach you the alphabet?" he asked.

Judging
by how he'd already begun drawing figures that stood out in her
Bending eye, he wasn't really going to give her a choice. However,
she had always wanted to read. Even as a kid, when she reached the
age where her father stopped reading to her, she had always wished
that books and scrolls didn't feel like blank nothingness beneath
her fingers. She didn't really know what the point of learning to
read was, seeing as she could never pick up a book and see the
letters anyway, but it was, well, something she'd always wanted. A
childhood wish.

Instead
of giving a gracious answer and looking positively thrilled, she
bowed to him and said in her usual manner, "Get teaching, Sokka the
Wordbending master."

An
amused chuckle escaped him and he muttered, "Wordbender."

-

Now,
as they stood in the woods, surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers, she
wasn't sure what to do. Sokka, Katara, and Aang were all safely
hidden in the trees, but she had refused to let her feet leave the
ground. Right as Aang had been reaching down to grab her and pull her
up by force, the Fire Nation soldiers had spotted her standing there
with her arms crossed and a deep frown on her face. Toph stood,
motionless and without a sure plan, waiting for the Firebenders to
make a move. Even the greatest Earthbender in the world with the help
of her companions couldn't take all these Benders without risking
injury or worse. If she moved – made any sign of Bending – they'd
attack and a fight would break out. If they moved, she would have to
strike. The slight pulse that flowed through her motionless body told
her that Sokka had lowered his body from the branch and was hiding
behind the bulk of the tree. She did nothing to acknowledge his
presence.

What
were these Firebending dunderheads waiting for? None of them threw
anything at her, spoke, or even moved. It was almost strange; she
hadn't even known that Firebenders could stand still.
Perhaps they were waiting for her to make the first move – a dumb
assumption if there ever was one. A smile tugged in the corners of
her mouth. Clearly they had heard about Toph Bei Fong, Earthbending
extraordinaire. And then –

Don't
do anything yet.

Sokka
was writing to her from behind the tree, most likely crouched on the
ground. And she understood him, too! It was like a bunch of lines
being drawn and Toph sensing the vibrations of their creation, then
those vibrations being translated into text that she could 'read'.

Blink
twice if you understand me.

The
idea was, she understood, not to make any motions that might cause
retaliation from the soldiers. Right now they wouldn't attack
unless provoked, and she was fresh out of genius ideas. After a
second, Toph blinked twice. Her heart began racing. Sokka began
furiously writing to her a mile a minute, and each symbol stood out
in her mind as if it had been stamped into the ground. She was really
and truly reading!

Aang
and Katara and back at the river. They're making a wave big enough
to wash all these soldiers and their machinery downstream.

Great.
Twinkletoes and Sugar Queen were off making a giant tidal wave. She
imagined that she hadn't felt them leave because they had probably
taken the stupid flying thing. But that wasn't the big issue. Right
now, the only problem with the plan was that she couldn't swim. Ah,
the many shortcomings of being blind and virtually rooted to the
earth.

Sokka,
being the forever thoughtful one, quickly made the clarification.

When
I give you a signal, you'll bend a hole in the ground and jump in,
then cover yourself up so you don't drown. Is that okay?

In
response, she blinked twice.

Good.
On my signal.

What
the signal would be was a mystery to Toph, but she assumed that she
would understand when the time came. She didn't have time to
contemplate this thought because, suddenly, she felt something. It
was strange, like an earthquake sending a tremor through her entire
body, making the usual clear-as-day vibrations mush together a
little. The wave. Next came the sound, a buzzing in her
hypersensitive ears like a dull roar.

The
soldiers heard it a few seconds later.

"Hey,
what is that? That sound," one soldier asked another.

"Is
it the girl?" another asked.

"Don't
be stupid," the first soldier replied. "She'd not doing
anything!"

As
the feeling got more intense, the mutterings and whispers among the
soldiers grew louder as well. And a second later they began shouting,
leaving the blind girl almost completely forgotten as she stood there
in the center of a barren clearing. What the wave looked like, she
couldn't tell. But it must have been absolutely huge, because it
was causing quite the commotion amongst the soldiers. They began
running in a frenzy of thundering footsteps and clanging metal on
metal. Toph stood there, still completely motionless with her hands
limp at her sides, until she heard Sokka's voice ring out over the
roaring tumult.

"Now,
Toph! Now!"

She
didn't need to be told twice. Heart hammering in her chest with a
combination of her fear of drowning and the thrill of danger, Toph
raised one foot and stomped down on the hard earth just as somebody
grabbed her forcefully around the waist. The ground swallowed she and
the person in a twisting of dirt, and they both vanished from sight.

Once
safely inside her underground air bubble, Toph raised her hands above
her head and prepared to hold up the dirt ceiling should the water be
too heavy for the earth alone to support. Through the ground she
could feel as literally tons of water rushed over her head, wiping
out soldiers and machinery alike. The ceiling became heavy, as if she
were holding up the world itself, and Toph maintained her rocklike
stance until the worst of the water had passed over.

When
the water had finally seceded, Toph let out a breath and dropped her
arms to her sides. A knowing grin came to her face and she focused
her unseeing eyes on the person who was still clinging to her waist
for dear life.

"Hi
Sokka. How nice of you to drop in," she said sweetly, her voice
laced with sarcasm. "I wasn't expecting you."

Sokka
gave an uncertain laugh and let go of her waist. "Sorry," he
apologized. "I didn't realize that I had no plan for myself until
the water came rushing at me."

"It's
okay. If I'd known you were coming, I would have brought a torch or
something," she said. Her voice sounded almost earnest, though he
knew that she was being cynical.

Another
nervous laugh. Toph sensed him place his hand on the dirt wall and
sigh, "Is it over yet?"

"I
think so. Wait – yes. I feel Twinkletoes running into the clearing
with Katara. Hold on while I boost us up." His arms found her waist
again and held on tight. Toph smirked in the darkness and made an
upward motion with her sturdy arms, and they shot towards the
surface.

Though
she couldn't see the light, she could feel the sun as it hit her
dark hair. Sokka winced and let go of her to shield his eyes from the
blinding light as they burst forth from the hole in the ground and
came level with the land. Aang and Katara stood there, waiting with
bated breath.

"That
was crazy," muttered Sokka once his eyes had adjusted to the light.

Toph
felt Katara's weight shift as she nodded. Toph's bare feet
stepped from her dry spot of dirt and onto the newly-formed mud. It
squished between her toes and she fought a smile; Forget the Fancy
Ladies' Day Spa – this was a foot massage. Everybody's
hearts, including her own, were pounding from the exhilarating events
that had transpired not two minutes ago.

"Crazy
is right." Katara's voice sounded a little reproachful. "That
was a really dangerous plan for all of us to go through with. Toph
could have drowned."

Toph
put her foot down hard in resentment and accidentally raised a large
boulder across the way. "Hey, I'm not the only one who would have
drowned," she defended herself. "If Sokka hadn't grabbed on for
the ride he'd be washing downstream with the rest of those Fire
Jerks."

"She's
got a point," Aang offered. Toph felt his shrug. "How did you
relay the message to Toph anyway, Sokka?" he asked, interested.

"Easy,"
Toph cut in before Sokka could answer. "He wrote it."

She
grinned; she didn't need to be able to see to know that Aang and
Katara were giving she and Sokka the world's most confused stares
in history.

-

Fin.

A/N: So there's your first taste of this collection. Like Cactus Juice, I'll probably mark it as complete, but I can update at any time.

Thanks for reading!

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